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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cricket and Bollywood

After the brilliant win, papers are falling over each other to find puns on Perth. ‘Aussies Knocked Off Their Perth’ said TOI while HT came up with ‘Perth-shattering’! The only one left out was – Mirth At Perth!

On that happy note, there are more thoughts…

*If Michael Hussey is trapped LBW – maybe on 99, for good measure – then, would the Hindi newspapers headline “Hussey to Phansi”?

* Bastard is okay. Monkey is not. Which means, I can comment on your father’s antecedents and precedents, but not on your forefathers’!

* In any case, why is such a big deal being made about the ‘monkey’ taunt?About four decades ago, India’s greatest showman and his heroine sang about marrying off their pet monkeys, which they had named after the holy rivers of India… “Tera monkey Ganga aur mera monkey Jamuna ka – bol Radha bol – sangam hoga ki nahin..."

Heard a brilliant joke about the competitive Aussies –Apparently, Sunil Gavaskar was invited to attend the premiere of a film he had made and the film was called Gavaskar. Sunny was very flattered that an Aussie director had made a film on his achievements. So, despite a lot of other commitments, he managed to fly down to Sydney for the show.He was ushered into the theatre by the crew and the film started. It was some arbit movie about some Aussie blokes in the desert, drinking beer and watching kangaroos. No cricket or any mention of Sunny. Went on and on. The interval happened and still, no cricket. Gavaskar thought there would probably be a change in plot in the second half. Again – nothing. The movie started and ended with a nice story about some Aussie way of life.Completely flummoxed at the film, Sunny asked the director of the film – “Boss, there is nothing in this film about me. Why have you named it after me?”And the competitive Aussie replied in tremendous anger – “You Bastard. You guys also made a film called Border. Did you show anything about Allan there?”

And to move from cricket to Bollwyood…Shyam Benegal ran into trouble with his film on Subhash Chandra Bose after the Bengalis objected to the leader being called A Forgotten Hero. So, he contemplated adding an item number, a bar brawl, car chase scenes, wedding songs and calling the film Bollywood Ka Bose.